Speaker by Various Artists

As the sun went down over Tokyo we looked out form the high coach window over a towering mass of factories and I realised what it meant to be in a seriously industrial nation: it’s awsome.

The Tokyites had a sense of pride. People who in New Zealand might wear overalls … street cleaners, garage attendants, truck drivers … in Tokyo these people wore the overall as a uniform (laundered, ironed, emblazoned), and proudly.

The best advice we got was not to worry in the event of getting lost: people would come to our assistance. This in fact turned out to be true. The whole place is so high on efficiency – at the level of both the national and the individual – it feels as if lost people are likely to cause problems if their lostness goes unrectified. That way. Over Here! Yes! No! Thank you.

Bowing really does your head in.

Many businesses have signs in English, and these are the most minimalistic, aggressively literal, irony-free zones you will see anywhere. Kiddie Land. Yamaha You Shop. Hotel With, next door to an identical building, the With Annex. And this for a business name: Client Service – It’s How You Treat People Everyday That Counts (the business: industrial machinery hire). This felt like the instructions with my toaster, only much, much bigger.

Perhaps this is the nature of the second language: literalism. I checked with Gina when we got back, and she reckoned it’s cultural. She said they try and teach ironic techniques at Unitec, and the Asians have a bit of a rough time with it.

Anyway the wedding was just completely astounding. What a do! The coach – not your average either, we’re talking leather seats – full of kiwis pulled up at a four story marble building, and I mean marble. The stuff was everywhere.

On the way there we saw a guy pissing the torrential piss of a piss artist in the gutter amidst the Saturday morning retail analysands. Japan, land of contrasts.

The first person we met was Candy, tall, blonde, fair, her accent amalgamated from diverse English speaking continents. “I’m one of your translators, and the producer of today’s wedding.” Producer? I had no idea what she was talking about, so engaged in halted English conversation with a woman in a kimono, who was fighting like an ESOL samurai.

The wedding took place in a chapel on the 3rd floor. How a chapel like this could possibly exist on the 3rd floor of anything is remarkable in itself. More marble, marble everywhere, harp and a violin over here, three little choristers over there, stained glass, bit of a Sistine number on the ceiling, and someone looking remarkably like a priest, heavily robed, arms spread wide in beatific benevolence: “Welcome!” he intoned, “to a Christian wedding!” Then he intoned the same thing again in Japanese.

My friend strolled down the aisle in a suit that had jumped straight out of a Jane Austen novel. Not tails, but a shiny, metallic morning suit with a flat bottomed Jacket as low in the front as in the back, tightly buttoned up to the breast with a wing collar, bow tie (not your average one either) and floral arrangement that thrust itself up and out with joyful fecundity.

She wore a perfect meringue with a train from here to oblivion. Ceremony. Contract. Fabulous music. Then out the arched door and onto the balcony, turn and bow to great applause. Flower shower. Bouquet toss, end of act one.

Act two began in the dining hall, a space of which I can remember only parquet and gold, nothing else. We found our places, close to the front but also off to the side … the geijin parents-with-kids’ spot. This was when we met our second translator, assigned to our table. Lovely guy, a lean, longhaired Hawaiian Japanese called Nigel, I think, with a goodly collection of Cheech and Chong jokes and translations like “ok guys, time to get pissed!”

Then the happy couple appeared in the doorway, majestically enrobed in kimono for She and what you might call a dining gown for He. The lights dimmed and their majesty soared as two follow spots picked them up and lit their promenade through the adoring crowds, screaming their praise in standing ovation. They took their place at the grand table at the head of the hall.

The food was astoundingly intricate: really, really complex, detailed little constructions, but no one was taking the least bit of notice. We were all too busy listening to speeches, watching fan dances, and listening to each other sing Karaoke.

I visited He at his table when He was alone, waiting for She to make another costume change, and He offered me a speech. Never one to turn down a mic, I accepted, but was unprepared 10 minutes later amid chopsticks and toddler-wrangling to hear my name called out through the PA and realise the two follow spots had landed upon me. No pressure, just a few short punchy one liners along the lives of two people bringing together two families and two cultures … the kind of thing you hear on marae … seemed about right.

But what was really surprising was the realisation, momentarily poised at the centre of attention, of just how much stage management was going on around me. There was one guy who spent the whole gig in a kind of ambulant squat, his outstretched arms locating his white-gloved hands at about table-top height. He pointed me across the room, assisted with a gentle shove, and no sooner had I commenced my trajectory when I saw another guy with his white-gloved hands up and ready to catch. Okay, don’t fight it, stand where the ninja stage manager tells you. That way. Over Here! Yes! No! Thank you.

Bowing really does your head in.

With the ninja stage managers, plus the light op’s, plus the AV op’s, plus the non-stop MC, the physical production crew alone must have numbered eight or nine. Added to these were the translators, the whole chapel crew and of course untold waiting staff. By the time I took bongo (now 2) outside for a bit of a breather we were both starting to suffer from sensory overload.

But the clincher was yet to come. If everything thus far felt like a sensory feast for all the senses, the final stages of the reception resembled classical tragedy in its pathos, its beauty and its use of deux ex machina. In short, the bride engaged in publicly amplified conversation with her dead father. Of course, it’s all smoke and mirrors, and everyone knows that, but even Nigel had tears in his eyes as he kept us up to date with the discourse. “She’s sorry he never got to see this day … he says he likes the husband very much … he says he loves their child with all his heart … she says she’ll do everything she can to make him proud … he says he’ll always love them both.” And then, tear ducts awash with wonderment and disbelief, “Yeah, that’s what he’s saying!” It helped enormously that the photograph of dad appeared to have been taken while he was singing karaoke. It meant he had – in addition to a great smile – his own microphone.

After the reception we went on to a private house and carried on the party. Crazy Japanese Uncle sang English and Japanese folk songs with bongo all the way on the coach. “1 little 2 little 3 little Indian … hee hee hee!” The food in the house was even better than that at the reception. People sang songs, love songs, and also national anthems. We trained back to the hotel and spend the next day in a thermal hot spring, which was what I always imagined Roman baths to be like.

The custom I liked the most was that of never pouring your own drink, which – if you do – is apparently a damning indictment of your friend’s social abilities. Trouble is it only works if everyone’s on the same page with it.

The day after that we flew to London.

On the evening of the 27th of April a message started appearing in Usenet newsgroups provided to customers of Xtra. The message stated:

For some time Xtra has hosted a complimentary Usenet server.

However, the number of people using this service has steadily declined and there are now only a few hundred regular users.

Because of this decline in popularity, we have decided that, from May 3, we will no longer provide the newsgroup service.

If you'd like to continue using newsgroups, there are other services available such as gignews.com, or free services such as MSN Forums and Google Groups.

We like to apologise to the small number of regular users who will be affected by this change.

Kind regards,

The Team @ Xtra

The message, which apparently went against all rules of acceptable behaviour for Usenet in being posted to all the newsgroups (54882 at last count hosted by Xtra) caused confusion and anger among Xtra Usenet users.

Initially, it was thought that the message may be a hoax, but many people (I'm still waiting for a response from the three emails I sent over the last 3 days) received a canned response from Xtra confirming the posting :

29/04/2006 11:31 AM

Thank you for your email.

I would like to confirm that Xtra will be no longer continue hosting
Usenet email newsgroups.

If you want to continue using Usenet we recommend that you use a third party newsgroup provider such as giganews.com, alternately you can search online for other providers. Giganews charge for their service but alternative free options could include MSN forums or Google groups.

If you require any more help with this issue please feel free to
reply.

Kind regards

Chris D
Service Co-ordinator
Xtra Online Team
Telecom New Zealand Ltd
Xtra Helpdesk 0800 22 55 98
[email protected]

So what is all the fuss about? Newsgroups (Usenet) have been part of the Internet in New Zealand since the Internet first arrived in New Zealand. We are talking about a service that is around 20 years old - my first recorded posting is back on the 4th of December, 1987. There are many thousands of messages posted to the New Zealand groups each month. Effectively Xtra has said, "Even though the service is used quite extensively, we won't support them any more and you will need to rely on another ISP to provide this service."

A service that Xtra has always provided (and now, for marketing spin, is caling "complimentary") is being removed with no adjustment in prices or other services in compensation.

It would be nice to see Xtra explain what services you pay for and what are complimentary. In their own, Chat and Online Discussion Policy newsgroups are just part of the "service" and not tagged as complimentary. Newsgroups have always been part of the service provided by Xtra. As recently as April 22 the Xtra site had detailed instructions on how to use newsgroups. No mention anywhere that is was a complimentary service.

If you read the terms and conditions published by Xtra they mention a 30 day notification period, not seven. Also, notification of changes is meant to be made on the Xtra website. But, what Xtra has done is, under the main conditions of service created separate conditions of service for all the main services. The 30 day notice may only apply to the "Customer Terms" - but I am not a lawyer. If it does apply, then what are the consequences of Xtra breaking a legal contract?

In the end, to stop a service that has been provided by Xtra since its inception with only seven days notice seems just plain bad customer service. But, this is behaviour one expects from a monopolistic organisation.

Now, I will admit that the binary groups where people could post programmes, pictures, movies etc, could generate a lot of traffic. But Xtra stopped carrying those last year. The level of traffic will have significantly dropped as it is now only carrying text messages. What it seems to come down to is an unwillingness to pay for the storage of the articles and the management of the server.

This then raises the question of exactly what Xtra does provide. For many it is seen as a mechanism for Telecom to maintain a monopolistic control on the Internet market in much of New Zealand. One only had to read the discussions that show how discriminatory Telecom is in provisioning broadband services to Xtra compared to other ISPs (a day or so versus two weeks) to realise how bad things are getting and how uncompetitive things are.

Juha Saarinen in the ComputerWorld Friday Fry Up has a story "More for less at Xtra." Juha points out that :

By chipping off the Internet services like this, Xtra is becoming increasingly useless as an ISP. Lets compare Xtra to Google for instance:

Xtra
-------------------------------------
Games servers: No
Usenet service: No
Globally accessible email: No[1]
Webmail: Yes
Portal with independent news: No
Free web hosting: No
Free video clip hosting: No
Social networking: No
Calendaring: No
Free blogs: No
Google
-------------------------------------
Games servers: No
Usenet service: Yes
Globally accessible email: Yes
Webmail: Yes
Portal with independent news: Yes
Free web hosting: Yes
Free video clip hosting: Yes
Social networking: Yes
Calendaring: Yes
Free blogs: Yes

[1] Customers can read mail through Xtra webmail, but POP3 access is blocked from outside Xtra and SMTP (TCP port 25) is filtered.

As Juha points out, downloading the Google Cheat Sheet shows just what can be available from a provider.

My premise is that Xtra is effectively being used by Telecom as an anti-competitive device against other NZ ISPs. For most users, all it provides now is connectivity and email. Effectively Xtra has become a mechanism for Telecom to extract more revenue for what is barely more than a wholesaled service.

While this monopolistic approach is allowed to continue will we ever see a real improvement in services available to New Zealand users? If we want a knowledge economy, as Bruce Simpson points out, we must move from being consumers of information to producers. You don't do that with 128kbps upload speeds and reductions in service!

For many Xtra newsgroup users, it appears that this announcement is the tipping point for them (well it is for me) to go through the disruption of moving from Telecom/Xtra to another provider for all their phone and data needs.

John Holley is an Auckland-based information services manager and army reserve officer. He has a website here.

Lead me to the barricades; I seem to have roused some rabble with my guest post reporting from the Freelance Marketplace conference.

Former Listener editor Finlay Macdonald, now books editor at the Sunday Star Times:

Good blog Deborah, and something I've grappled with from both sides of the editorial barricade. At the Listener I instigated an informal system whereby I negotiated a fair price for each contributed article, depending on the work involved, the experience of the writer, the length and so on. So for much of the feature section we never did the cents-per-word calculation, we looked at a story and said, is it worth $1000, $1500 etc? It was much better and fairer, and it meant you used fewer, better freelancers (Kim Griggs was one of them, actually).

Of course, that was with a magazine, which you could manipulate to fit fewer (better) stories into more pages and so on, so that the demand for content was not overwhelming. With papers I guess it is harder to play that game.

From one provincial journalist:

I hope you lot with identifiable names kick up a bit of noise at least. I am on National Super, with about another $100 in a good week. In a checkered career I spent about 10 years as a reporter for the Kaikohe Northern News when it was winning national awards. Jim Eagles built a national identity from there. Now I do a fortnightly column for less than I am prepared to admit. The management of the paper do not have any interest in the quality of writing. Give them hell. It is a great cause.”

Former AA Directions editor John Cranna said one of the first things he did when taking over the editor’s chair at the country’s biggest circulation magazine had been to put the freelance rate at the magazine up from 30 to 54 cents per word. This meant he had to overspend his budget.

The ad revenues shot up partly because we were publishing much better writing and more than covered the deficit. But there was blood on the floor, even though our ad revenues nearly doubled. There is huge corporate resistance to paying writers what they are worth.

Media commentator David Cohen:

I disagree with the Wheeler's ridiculous comment about Watergate vs Rachel Hunter. Anyone who's spent a few days in Washington would appreciate the singular ubiquity of the advertisement-fat WaPo in that city: In his 'America: A User¹s Guide,' Simon Hoggart says that it's for this reason that DC may be the last place on earth where hometown journalists are practically revered.

Well, how did that happen? Through Watergate, of course, which in raising the profile of the paper like never before helped raise its sales, which in turn raised its earnings. What did Rachel Hunter ever do for the Washington Post? Incidentally, the highly profitable WaPo like the NYTimes, invests most of its profits straight back into the editorial side of the operation.

So clearly the respective families who run these papers must see a direct relationship between calibre of journalistic product and profits.By the by, it would be interesting to get one of these economist johnnies to tell us what the purchasing power of NZ40c is when taken across the 15-odd years the NZ Listener has paid it. As far as I can see, an average annual cost of living increase of 2.5% would chip about a cent off that figure each year; meaning that today's 40c is worth around 25c in 1991 terms.

There were several correspondents who, like me, felt unappreciated:

40c a word is pathetic. No, appalling. But it's obvious that quality journalism in NZ is not especially valued, either by editors in print and TV media, or the public. We get shit mostly. I guess that's used as the measure for paying all journalists. In any industry if crap work is able to be tolerated then the lowest paid worker will be used.

I guess that's why 40 year old librarians get paid less than 20 year old policemen and freelance journos get less than freelance IT workers.”

And for some journalists it wasn’t just the money, but a lack of respect.

What can never be said of course (on peril of losing even the most modest modicum of work) is how useless some of the editors are re returning calls/e-mails/actually committing to a decision and so on. I can live (just) with the money sometimes, but the utter discourtesy and unprofessionalism that some show astonishes me.

I am prepared to wait in a queue like everyone else, but it does seem to me that if I am putting a story idea before someone that i am doing it with 20 years experience behind me and am not going to waste their time or mine.

But e-mails go into the ether, PAs act as buffers and decisions go unmade so a story which is politically or socially timely just withers, or runs far too late to be relevant.

IT writer Juha Saarinen:

I think you're spot on when you point out the lack of competition here as the major reason why rates are so low. Some people would say that the work is of lower standard here than elsewhere, but I think that's directly related to the poor rates. Going back to the lack of competition, it's something that seems endemic here. Haven't figured out why it is, but it is rather strange that many markets are uncontested in New Zealand. Well, stitched up would be the better term.

Former Listener deputy editor Tim Watkin also contacted me from offshore to correct what he had said in the What Editors Want session.

Fair comment that I might not have charmed the audience, but at least be accurate as to why I wasn't winning friends. Like the other two panellists, I certainly said vague outlines were of no appeal (in the midst of trying to get out a weekly mag) and that I expected clean, compelling copy, not pieces that were wrong, slapdash or that I had to extensively re-write.

Those are professional standards many freelancers aren't meeting. But by no means did I say that freelancers had to accept the going rate. In fact I specifically said I was sympathetic with their campaign. What I went on to say was that given the tight market this year; the growing numbers of adequate, if not exciting, freelancers; and the fact budgets are set (and cut) above most editors' heads, an increase in the 40c/word rate was going to be a huge battle, and I didn't hold out much hope in the short term. As you point out, the print media duopoly will be hard to crack. To force the rate up, I said, freelancers would need to improve professional standards and keep campaigning.

So there were plenty of things I said that might have annoyed people; just not what you reported.

I have to admit I was not at Tim’s session – childcare issues – so I was going on the response to his speech as everyone was bristling about it over sandwiches at lunch.

There you go Tim: consider the record put straight.

Of course journalists are a cynical bunch as a longtime journalist who wanted to remain anonymous said:

The hacks will never organise, you know - despite the fact that in the age of the "content provider" they wield a lot of theoretical power. But they are largely a forlorn lot, cheap and disloyal, and are thus highly exploitable by proprietors.

Another interesting piece of information which came out of the woodwork: APN has 520 freelance journalists on its payroll. Could this forlorn lot prove the cynics wrong?

Okay, as equal rights movements go it’s not exactly suffragettes chaining themselves to Downing Street or civil rights campaigners risking their lives in Mississippi. But get 170 bolshie freelance journalists in Auckland’s Hyatt Ballroom and you get the distinct feeling something is brewing.

There was certainly a whiff of ferment in the air at the first ever Freelance Marketplace conference held in Auckland earlier this month – freelancers are mobilising against being second class journos.

The conference was a labour of love for its organiser, Wellington science journalist Kim Griggs, who managed to do the seemingly impossible and get both the union (the EPMU) and the publishers (APN Print) to sponsor it. Jim Tucker from the Journalists Training Organisation (JTO) kindly helped organise it and channel the rabble rousing.

Whether the publishers would have been quite so supportive if they had heard the tone of some of the presentations is another matter. Who knows? They were invited to take part in a debate about rates but made a group decision not to turn up.

The conference obviously tapped into some need among the freelance community – with 170 people it was way oversubscribed - including useful sessions about what editors want, briefings on technology, copyright and contracts.

Now departed Listener deputy editor Tim Watkin didn’t make any new fans by telling freelancers he had no time for rough outlines in pitches, he didn’t expect to have to do rewrites and they should accept the going word rate of 40c a word.

But the mood started getting really heated in the final session – a debate about pay rates featuring the conference organiser Kim Griggs, former Herald columnist Philippa Stevenson and myself – and continued over drinks at the Northern Club. (That was my contribution to organising the conference – I hustled some lovely sponsorship for the cocktail function including a delightful drop from media-friendly Brown Bros wine – and schmoozed us into the not-so-staid Northern Club: “I’ll put you in Bankside where you don’t have to wear ties,” the nice lady, who obviously understood hacks, said. Note to self: I’m still keen to get some kind of press club happening there as they don’t seem to mind rambunctious journos.)

The final session was intended to be a discussion with publishers where we could get their side of the story, but in the event, no-one from mahogany row would front. But I suspect the “We’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it anymore” message will be filtering through.

So why are freelancers so stroppy ?

You be the judge.

At the going rate of 40c/word, in order to earn the average wage ($42K) and cover your overheads you need to write about 3800 words a week – the equivalent of a cover story in the Listener, researched, interviewed, written and edited in a week. This might be possible as a freakish one-off where you live on black coffee but is simply not do-able week after week if you want to retain your relationship and your sanity.

If you write a more realistic 2500 words a week – still about five news stories - you will earn about $35K. If you take off expenses and superannuation you are left with $23K. Hang on, even teenagers don’t want to work for that.

Even at 50c a word, after childcare costs, you are barely keeping your head above water.

Conference organiser Kim Griggs last year did a survey of freelance rates which confirmed rates were depressingly low and in a depressingly narrow range. They compare to the going rate in Australia of at least A70c word – and $1 for a lot of business feature writing.

It certainly didn’t take me long to become frustrated with the pay as a freelancer.

I was a staff journalist on the NBR for almost 11 years and even by non-journalistic terms, well-paid. Although I’d been news editor for a few years it was turning me into a stressbucket so I chose to return to writing and by the time I left, I was probably earning the equivalent of $1.20 per word.

When I left to have a baby and didn't want to go back to work in the office full time, I chose to freelance.

Although I was writing what I thought was quite good stuff, I got very frustrated to find I was now getting paid at most 50c/word. This was considered top dollar by freelance standards. As a freelancer I have written for a variety of publications but the situation was pretty much the same with all of them.

This seemed counter-intuitive. When I was taking up a desk in prime Shortland Street real estate I got paid more than double what I was paid when I was covering my own overheads, but producing the same work. Go figure.

I didn't really understand:

- why I was getting paid at the same rate as a beginning journalist straight out of tech although I have won five Qantas awards and both the top financial journalism awards;

- why there was so little negotiation of the rate;

- why I would get paid the same rate for a short piece that required a huge amount of research as I did for a long piece that was relatively easy to write;

- why publishers were boasting on one hand they were making record profits and on the other telling me they couldn’t afford to pay enough for me to make the average wage;

- why newspapers and magazines buying my work seemed to think they could pressure me not to work for the competition although they weren't prepared to pay me any more in compensation;

- why I was inundated with more work than I could do – challenging, interesting work - but the price I was worth didn't go up (even though I can be quite stroppy when necessary and have been on negotiation courses per kind favour of NBR)

So much for market forces, eh!

No wonder journalists are renowned for being leftwing and anti-the market when this is their experience of how a free market operates.

This dismal pay situation meant I have chosen only to do work which I find interesting – which is fine up to a point – although people like me who work to earn a second income undermine the bargaining power of other freelance journalists. And I don’t want to be the journalistic equivalent of a bored housewife running a suburban dress shop. I take my work seriously – even obsessively. But there is little incentive to do so when the publications apparently consider what I am producing as a buy-by-the-yard commodity. An economist might say the pricing has little, if any, sensitivity to quality.

I took this conundrum to a couple of economists to find out why. Is it just because New Zealand is too small to function as a proper market? I know the Business Roundtable, for one, reject this view when it comes to the telco market. So why is it true for journalism?

And do experienced journalists add more value than beginning journalists?

If they do, are the profits they generate being funnelled offshore to prop up newspaper proprietors other failing investments, such as the Herald's subsidisation of the UK Independent, which made a big loss last year?

Why are all freelance journalists paid the same? More and more journalists now operate on a freelance or contract basis rather than being on the staff of a media organisation – freelancers are no longer the people who can’t get a fulltime job on a paper. Surely using freelancers is cheaper for the organisation. So why are they paid so much less than staff writers? Do media proprietors pay a premium for the satisfaction of seeing their staff sitting at their desks?

Economist Brent Wheeler said:

The business model for publications where revenue comes primarily from advertising, and less from subscriptions means in economic terms it matters not a whit what stories are about, their quality, who writes them, the quality of the person writing, their experience or anything else UNLESS it affects advertising/subs or both in a material or ongoing way

For these reasons a photo shot of Rachel Hunter in New Idea is as good or better a money earner as the original story on Watergate.

In short, the demand for actual news stories of what we might term serious quality is tiny.

In-house journalists are paid more because they are not paid for writing to a high standard at all, but instead being reliable, being there every day, writing something, no matter what, being a model employee that makes other journos do these things – none of which are journalistic skills but help the paper make money from advertisers and subs – this explains why some useless journos are kept on and on for years at papers when their skills are palpably terrible or out of date etc

As a freelancer are now selling just words, not the whole suite of skills and assets.

I don’t think the market is inefficient, it’s just that the market you are in is the impermanent

“I-just-want-to-fill-a-gap” market for words and the price is horrible. Naked words don’t sell well on their own.

Roger Kerr of the Business Roundtable said:

In response to why journalists are not well paid, beginning journalists get paid about the same as teachers and nurses etc, which is what you would expect.

As to freelancers, this is a different labour market from inhouse journalists. In-house journalists are paid for different services – covering rounds on a day to day basis. Freelancers are sometimes competing with others who write articles for free (eg himself) or foreign writers whose work can be obtained cheaply.

All New Zealand incomes are lower than we’d like them to be. We need more growth, more income for everyone, including journalists. Lower taxes would help (the usual Business Roundtable salve for every ill.)

I might agree with Roger about taxes, but I still didn’t feel like either of those answers really solved the particular freelance conundrum.

I suspect other small markets (Ireland? Holland?) have a dynamic freelance sector where good journalists are paid more than crap ones.

The best answer yet came from the mind-like-a-steel-trap of freelance financial journalist Jenny Ruth after a few wines: the duopoloy between the two major publishing groups depresses the price for freelance work.

And despite all the hype about the decline of the MSM, publishers of any stripe are still going to need content.

“Talent is the new limited resource,” as media mogul Barry Diller, who has thrown his lot in with new media, put it.

Presumably in the recently buoyant advertising market, publishers can afford to pay a bit more if they had to: the Herald’s owner APN had record after tax profits in 2005 of almost $150 million while Fairfax made $93.5 million here in six months and ACP magazines made more than $140 million.

I’d love to know whether the publishers here fight the good fight with their offshore head offices over the proportion of profits which are channelled back into the local investment. You can’t tell me journalists on the Independent in London are expected to write for 13p a word.

So what was the outcome of the conference? Judging by comments on the journalists’ website Journz, more freelancers are learning to say “No” to rates which make no sense. There is a movement to set up a new freelance journalists ‘ organisation to lobby for higher rates. And freelancers are connecting into networks to support each other – at least I have made some great new contacts with kick-arse journos working in other parts of the country, like Tauranga’s Wordwitches.

Because as the suffragettes or civil rights campaigners would tell us, united we stand and all that. But no, I’m not joining the union. Yet.

There are few things I enjoy more than sitting down and reading Frank Haden's journalism. He is, of course, renowned for his balanced and insightful political writing. But, frankly, if you'll pardon the pun, I think I enjoy his linguistics column Words Worth even more. It's so satisfying to see Frank laying down the law, and sorting out those pointy-headed academics who have the nerve to call themselves language experts.

I was delighted, therefore, to open my weekend newspaper and find that Public Address had received a mention in the Words Worth column. Fairfax New Zealand have kindly given me permission to reproduce it here. I do so in the hope that it will offer some much needed guidance to the Public Address 'bloggers'.

WORDS WORTH with Frank Haden

Although I never read Public Address, I have long been concerned with its role in the decline of correct English usage in this country. The letters given below -- just a few of the many complaints I have received about this website -- show why we should all be worried.

Douglas Myers of England writes: Whenever I hear Russell Brown on the radio, he seems to pronounce the word 'often' as "offen". Neither my nanny nor any of my tutors at my exclusive private school used this pronunciation. Is this just a quirk of Russell's state school accent -- or is he simply wrong?

Frank Haden responds: This question can be answered by recalling that the word 'often' is an oxymoron. This simply means that it is a new word which is made up of two existing words joined together. In this case, the component words are 'oft' and 'en'. 'En' is, of course, a preposition -- a word made up of only two letters -- and, as such, should never be 'stranded'. It is therefore quite incorrect to pronounce 'oft' with a silent 't'. Mr Brown would do well to remember his own basic errors before referring to leading New Zealand linguists such as myself as "nutters".

Susan Wood of Parnell writes: In a recent 'blog' David Slack quotes Descartes as saying "Cogito, ergo sum". What on earth does he mean by this? I understand the word 'sum', but the rest just seems like a foreign language!

Frank Haden responds: Academic linguists will tell you that English is a Germanic language. This is entirely wrong. It is actually descended from Greek and Latin, although it should be noted that the Ancient Greeks and Romans were not the slovenly 'dagoes' that we know today. They were more like British people. Mr Slack, as with so many other white-anting intellectual terrorists, has just joined together a string of meaningless syllables in order to make himself appear clever. It sounds like Latin or Greek, but it's not. Descartes -- who was born in Glasgow, and who only spoke English -- was actually famous for saying: "I think, therefore I am". Translated into Latin and Greek (it is the same for both languages) this is: "Iway inkthay, ereforethay Iway amway".

Katie Drager of Diamond Harbour writes: I was interested to read Damian Christie's comments about the Malibu Bomber. I have always wondered about the Malibu Bomber's famous manifesto which ends: "Meet my demands or I will blow up the whole of your motherf**king beach community". Surely this isn't grammatically correct?

Frank Haden responds: Like many terrorists, the Malibu Bomber seems compelled to split his infinitives. This is quite misguided, and will only make educated people lose sympathy with his bombing campaign. The correct way to communicate his message to the citizens of Malibu would have been: "Meet my demands or I will blow up the whole of your beach community, motherf**kers". Damian Christie should know better than to reference such ungrammatical rubbish in his web-log.

John Campbell, formerly of Wellington, writes: I adore Tze Ming Mok's marvellous poetry and prose, but in a recent blog I was disappointed to hear her admit that: "I punched Keith on the arm". This hardly seems appropriate.

Frank Haden responds: I quite agree. Unfortunately, like the offspring of many recent immigrants, Miss Mok has gone in one generation from pulling a rickshaw to writing poems and essays for so-called 'literary' magazines like Landfall. As a consequence, she seems to think she knows more about English than real New Zealanders such as myself and Max Cryer. She doesn't. Miss Mok is blissfully ignorant of the fact that the word 'the' is a vowel. Since English is what we call a CV language -- where vowels are alternated with consonants -- then the correct sentence should be: "The arm, the Keith, I punched". If Miss Mok has this much trouble navigating the English language, then one can only imagine what she's like behind the wheel of a car.

Jude Dobson of Auckland writes: I am a huge fan of Che Tibby's blog, but I've never been entirely sure what he means by 'metics'. Can you help? By the way, is it true that you can catch Hepatitis 'C' from shearing?

Frank Haden responds: Dr Tibby's qualifications have obviously not been awarded on the basis of his spelling. He actually means to use the word 'metrics'. This kind of schoolboy howler is inexcusable, particularly from a member of the medical profession. 'Metrics' is an adjective which describes the system of weights and measures invented by Napoleon Bonaparte. Mr Bonaparte also introduced the Acadamie Francaise, an organization which provides severe fines or even prison sentences for misuse of the French language. Of course, the politically correct linguists in this country would never dream of doing the same thing for English. I wouldn't want to live in France -- they eat too many onions -- but I think the French do have a point in terms of linguistic purity. And, yes -- since you ask -- I know of several people who have caught Hepatitis 'C' from shearing. It can also be transmitted via toilet seats.

Wayne Mapp of the North Shore writes: I think Jolisa Gracewood is a terrific writer, but I recently read that she has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. This sounds as if it might be a type of political correctness. Should I be investigating?

Frank Haden responds: Yes, you certainly should. 'Ms' Gracewood is a well-known radical who is at the forefront of a campaign to destroy the New Zealand way of life. Comparative Literalists (as they call themselves) have no regard for grammar or punctuation, and encourage the kind of lazy attitude that has seen New Zealand perform so dismally in the Melbourne Commonwealth games. For example, in her regular radio broadcasts, Ms Gracewood can be heard to pronounce the word 'sea' as if it rhymes with 'see'. It should, of course, be pronounced to rhyme with 'say'. Otherwise the opening lines of Shakespeare's famous Sonnet LXV: "Oh, I do like to live/beside the seaside/beside the seaside/beside the sea" would hardly make sense as a piece of poetry. Ms Gracewood's qualifications from Cornell University prove nothing more than the fact that she is a show-off. It is all very well to talk about literature, but it is a dangerous distraction when it is at the expense of our sporting achievements.

One wonders whether we would have lost the America's Cup if it weren't for Ms Gracewood and the rest of her 'comrades' at Public Address. Slovenly English has always been the enemy of athletic prowess, as it is of good singing articulation, and of healthy bowels.